Navy Planning to Cancel Long-Troubled Radar System

Reversing the Navy's longstanding support, Acting Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe will recommend that the Pentagon cancel a $2 billion electronic radar-jamming system that has failed crucial flight tests on fighter planes it is designed to protect, senior Navy officials said today.

The Pentagon has spent more than 15 years and $1.6 billion to develop the system, the Airborne Self-Protection Jammer, and has ordered 136 of the devices. But the system, which is intended to protect carrier-based F-14's and F/A-18's, has never passed all its flight tests.

Last month, the Navy acknowledged that testing standards had been relaxed to allow the system to pass important flight tests, but officials insisted that the changes were routine and directed by civilian Pentagon officials.

The Pentagon's top acquisition official, Under Secretary of Defense Donald J. Yockey, has scheduled a meeting for Nov. 16 to discuss alternatives to the program, which is expected to be ended after the first 136 devices on order are delivered next year. The program had been scheduled to go into full production this fall.

Congress may beat the Pentagon to the punch in ending the program. Senate and House negotiators, meeting this week to hammer out a compromise version of the military budget bill for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, are expected to block a total of $257 million in financing for the jammer.

The jammer system has provoked debate at the highest Pentagon levels for the past four years and became a test of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's ability to reverse a decadelong pattern of buying expensive weapons before all the bugs are worked out.

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Mr. O'Keefe, who was named Acting Navy Secretary in July, consistently opposed the jammer program when he was Pentagon comptroller, and he is expected to forward his recommendations to cancel the program to Mr. Cheney soon.

The jamming device is intended to identify dozens of enemy radar signals simultaneously, distinguish which are the most threatening and then emit signals to block or confuse enemy air defenses. In addition to the 136 jammers already ordered, the Navy planned to buy 600 if the devices passed tests. Maker Awaits Report on Tests

An I.T.T. spokesman, Brandon Belote, said today that the company would have no comment until Dr. Duncan's final report on the Navy tests was completed in early November.

The latest chapter in the jammer program's history began unfolding last March when the General Accounting Office and Republican and Democratic senators accused the Defense Department of breaking its own rules by allowing the Navy to continue buying the device even though it had failed several laboratory tests.

Navy and Pentagon officials denied any wrongdoing and promised that kinks in the program would be ironed out in the more important flight tests.

Admiral Hill's Aug. 17 report concluded, however, that the jammer device "was determined to be not operationally suitable." The test results were first reported by Defense Week, a trade publication.

The Navy office in charge of developing the program, I.T.T. and Westinghouse complained that the testing procedure was flawed and requested that the tests be conducted again. Mr. Yockey then asked Dr. Duncan to report on the Navy's test procedures and results by Nov. 7.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 30, 1992, on Page A00017 of the National edition with the headline: Navy Planning to Cancel Long-Troubled Radar System. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe